Anatomy of a Modern Node.

js
Application Architecture
SET HEALTH RULES

Alert & Respond > Health Rules

WEB SERVER

CONFIGURE & VIEW

Navigate to AppDynamics Exchange

Search for your server
Download and Install extension
Navigate back to AppDynamics Controller
Analyze > Metric Browser
Find your extension

CONFIGURE

End User Experience > Web > Pages &

AJAX Requests
Double-click on selected Page
View Summary Timeline to locate bottleneck

VIEW

WEB SERVER

IOS / ANDROID

End User Experience > Web > Analyze

Focus on location, browser type, device type,
and other combinations to analyze performance.

CACHE

Navigate to AppDynamics Exchange

Search for your server
Download and Install extension
Navigate back to AppDynamics Controller
Analyze > Metric Browser
Find your extension

VIEW

Servers > remote services

Double-click remote service

EXTERNAL WEBSERVICES

CACHE
VIEW

Troubleshoot > Slow Response Times >

Slowest DB & Remote Service Calls
Select HTTP

Navigate to Application Flowmap

View latency to your cache server

TRANSACTIONS
CONFIGURE BUSINESS TRANSACTIONS
Navigate to Business Transactions
Right-click Transaction
Choose configuration options to organize
transactions

ERRORS

SLOW CODE EXECUTION

VIEW RUNTIME ERRORS

VIEW TRANSACTION SNAPSHOT

Troubleshoot > Errors > Error Transactions

Double-click Transaction Snapshot
Drill Down > Error Details

Application Dashboard > Transaction Snapshots

> Show Filters
Select search criteria > Search
Double-click Transaction Snapshot
Start Drill Down
Click on Call Graph OR Hot Spots to view call
graph
If Process Snapshot exists, it will have a
clickable GUID in the Summary tab

VIEW UNCAUGHT EXCEPTIONS

Configure > Instrumentation > Select Node.js Tier
Scroll down to Custom Rules
Create rules to group, match and exclude your
transactions

Troubleshoot > Errors > Exceptions

Double-click Exception
Double-click Transaction Snapshot
Drill Down > Error Details

VIEW PROCESS SNAPSHOT

CONFIGURE ERROR REPORTING

CONFIGURE TRANSACTION API

Use the custom API functions to manually

define the beginning and ending of a
transaction from within your code
Navigate to Business Transactions to view

Configure > Instrumentation > Error Detection >

Node.js - Error Detection
Configure Ignored Exceptions or Logged
Messages

NODE.JS

Navigate to Servers > App Servers > [Your

Node.js Tier] > [Node.js Node]
Click Collect Process Snapshots
Enter a time between 1 and 60 seconds
Double-click Process Snapshot in list to view

Hint: This is useful in cases where you have a

transaction executing jobs in an infinite loop and
want to register each job as a transaction.

ANALYSIS
VIEW APPDYNAMICS MACHINE AGENT
Download & Install Machine Agent
Navigate to Servers > App Servers >
[Your Node.js Tier] > [Node.js Node]
Select Hardware

VIEW HARDWARE

Application Dashboard > Transaction Snapshots >

Show Filters
Select search criteria > Search
Double-click Transaction Snapshot
Start Drill Down > Hardware

NODE.JS

NODE.JS

CONFIGURE TRANSACTION DISCOVERY

VIEW

EXTERNAL WEBSERVICES

CONFIGURE & VIEW

END USER EXPERIENCE

WEB

COMPARE RELEASES

Analyze > Compare Releases

Select time ranges to compare

VIEW NODE.JS METRICS

Analyze > Metric Browser > Application

Infrastructure Performance
Expand [Node.js tier] > Expand Node.js metrics
View specific additional Node.js metrics

VIEW

VIEW

Navigate to Servers > Databases

Double-click your DB
Select your Node.js Tier
View slow queries

Navigate to your Application Dashboard

> Flowmap
Find Queue Server
View latency to your queue server

DATABASE

DATABASE
Application Dashboard > Transaction Snapshots
> Show Filters
Select search criteria > Search
Double-click Transaction Snapshot
Start Drill Down > SQL Calls

VIEW

Navigate to Application Dashboard > Flowmap

Right-click on Database
Select View in Database Monitoring

Application Dashboards > Transaction

Snapshots
Find transactions that speak to your Queue
server
Double-click > Start Drill Down > Call Graph
Find method call that sends job, click to
correlate to downstream worker server for
associated call graph

DATABASE

INFO

In a service-oriented environment the

performance indicators of the distributed nature
of the transaction is an integral aspect of
characterizing transaction performance.
AppDynamics applies distributed transaction
tracing to for all business transactions as well as
for the entire application. Using a tag, trace, and
learn approach, AppDynamics traces the
transaction context across all tiers, including
JVMs, CLRs, Node.js servers, and calls to HTTP,
SOAP, databases, third party web services, etc.

VIEW

INFO

WORKER SERVERS

INTERNAL WEBSERVICES
DISTRIBUTED TRANSACTIONS

When a Node.js application communicates with

an external component that is not being
monitored as part of the same business
application, such as a database or a message
queue, you can monitor the performance data for
the communication.
AppDynamics displays distributed communication
performance in the business application and
business transaction flow maps.

WORKER SERVERS

INTERNAL WEBSERVICES

QUEUE SERVER

VIEW

QUEUE SERVER